Rebel Voices
An IWW Anthology

Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh (Paperback) (ISBN: 9780850366518)

With a new preface by Daniel Gross

Introduction by Fred Thompson

"Not even the doughtiest of capitalism's defenders can read these pages without understanding how much glory and nobility there was in the IWW story," NY Times Book Review

"an indispensable colletion of documents for the history of the American labour movement" Times Literary Supplement

The Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, or 'Wobblies', organized the first sit-down strike (General Electric, 1906), the first major car workers' strike (Detroit, 1911), and the first "no-fare" transit-workers' job-action (Cleveland, 1944). With imagination, flair and pluck, the IWW wrote many bright pages in the annals of working class emancipation. And they spread all over. An IWW chapter organised a massive though unsuccessful strike at the Glasgow Singer factory in 1911, spreading radicalism across Clydeside.

Wobblies made invaluable contributions to workers' culture. Many popular labour songs came from them, and their cartoons are of the funniest. An important influence on the 1960s New Left, the Wobbly theory and practice of direct action, solidarity, and "class-war" humour inspired several generations of civil rights and anti-war activists, and are a major source of ideas and inspiration for today. They were also among the first seeking to "make this planet a good place to live" (to quote an old Wobbly slogan).

Contents:
I. Our Big Union: The Philosophy of Industrial Unionism;
II. With Folded Arms: The Tactics of Direct Action;
III. Riding the Rails: I.W.W. Itinerants;
IV. Soapbox Militants: Free Speech Campaigns 1908-1916;
V. Joe Hill: Wobbly Bard;
VI. Bread and Roses: The 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike;
VII. Paterson: 1913;
VIII. Organizing the Harvest Stiffs;
IX. Lumberjacks: North and South;
X. Down in the Mines;
XI. Behind Bars: War and Prison;
XII. An I.W.W. Miscellany: 1924-1964;
Notes, The Language of the Migratory Worker, Selected Bibliography (1905-1963), Digging IWW History: Books Published Since 1963, by Fred Thompson, A Short Treatise on Wobbly Cartoons, by Franklin Rosemont. Index.

ILLUSTRATED WITH CONTEMPORARY CARTOONS & GRAPHICS